


How Long

by ideal_girl (trainwreckdress)



Series: The Albion Rooms [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Real Person Fiction, The Libertines
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-03-24
Updated: 2005-03-24
Packaged: 2017-11-02 19:41:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/372665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trainwreckdress/pseuds/ideal_girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I found this, buried underneath a mountain of old bills and receipts. It was with an envelope that had this scrawled across it (in my handwriting, even though I don't remember writing it): <i>To him, people were music -- a collection of songs mixed and remastered into albums. Songs for first sights, second kisses, and third tries.</i></p>
    </blockquote>





	How Long

**Author's Note:**

> I found this, buried underneath a mountain of old bills and receipts. It was with an envelope that had this scrawled across it (in my handwriting, even though I don't remember writing it): _To him, people were music -- a collection of songs mixed and remastered into albums. Songs for first sights, second kisses, and third tries._

Hermione wasn't sure how long it had been going on – Merlin knows she wasn't paying Ron's late nights any mind with her NEWTS looming and Harry sleepwalking all over the grounds. The proximity alarm she set up on the Fat Lady's portrait went off nearly every night, rousing her from bed and into her dressing gown, half awake and following Harry until he tired and slumped to sleep on whatever horizontal surface available.

So it wasn't until she spied Ron sneaking past the Fat Lady at some ridiculous o'clock in the morning, handing over sweets and other niceties in exchange for silence and only a little bit of cuckolding, that she finally twigged. Harry had decided to head back to the Tower in his dreamless stupor, and Hermione nearly woke him with her gasp at Ron's shaggy ginger hair streaked with sweat and denim trousers creased and dirty. Harry didn't wake, thankfully (she didn't feel like dodging any more _Crucios_ , ever, ta very much), instead choosing to move down the hall, away from their nice, lovely beds, and down into the bowels of the castle. Hermione signed, tugged her robe into some semblance of shape and followed Harry into the gloom.

*

Harry wasn't sure how long it had been going on – his sleeping was crap and courses too hard, and Hermione just kept _hovering_ – but he know something had to be going on. Ron never wanted to practice the really _fun_ spells, he kept skiving off on DADA lessons, and his broom was collecting dust under his bed. Harry heard him bartering with Seamus in the dining hall, passing over wrapped packages and leaning in close to exchange secret smiles. He wanted to ask Ron about the things he tucked into his robes, the piles of Muggle newsprint stuffed under his mattress. But then Hermione buzzed in his ear, hissing something about advanced thermocydics.

*

Ron was exactly sure how long it had been going on – remembers the first time he stumbled into the wrong pub on his way to meet the twins, lost somewhere in London with nothing in his pockets but lint and his wand. But no one minded his lack of coin or paper, or even his shabby robes – in fact, one of the Muggles walked up to him and plucked at the heavy cloth, rubbing his fingers over the thick seams. He introduced himself ( _"Peter, I'm Peter. And you?" "Um, I'm R—um, David. Yeah, David." "Ah!"_ ) and half the clientele, arm tight around Ron's shoulders as he led him through the crush. _"And this, David, this is Biggles,"_ Pete had said, laughing a bit as the man in question sighed and shook his head. _"Carl,"_ the man sighed by way of introduction, stuck a burning stick in his mouth and leaned across the cluttered table with his free hand outstretched. Ron took it, shook heartily, and nodded when Carl offered "Dave" something called _"a cigarette."_

*

It was all uphill from there, snatches of song and lines of melody, upended pint glasses and scoops of white powder that were just _brilliant,_ girls and boys bundled rightly against one another, talking about everything and nothing, all at once. Silence was golden and held dear, time to stare out the window at the rushing scenery, the bus eating up the miles. Ron felt his wand, stuck securely in his boot, nudging against his ankle, creaking and hissing with his movement, aching to leap to his fingertips and apparate the whole lot to Cardiff. 

But he didn't – only because he didn't want his friends to look at him differently. Who cared about the Ministry cracking down on unauthorized use of magic by minors ( _Thanks loads, Harry!_ ). The Ministry wouldn't the kind of magic _they_ were making, anyway – people coming together, creating music, mobilizing a crowd. Making something come alive. And it was freeing, strangely, to only work with his hands, no wand, scrawling across smooth-lined paper with a beat-up Biro, writing about things that he knew – good and evil, light and dark, snakes and lions. He thrilled at the wide-eyed stares he'd pull form Pete and the lopsided smirks from Carl, both hunched over their battered acoustics, Carlo picking out melodies and Pete speak-singing Ron's words, mixing in his own, as well as obscure bits of Muggle poetry that Ron bet even Hermione would have a hard time citing. 

He spent countless nights with them, hours of sleep snatched between classes, running from Hermione's shaking hands and Harry's furrowed brow. He found glitter in his shoes, torn scraps of paper in his pockets, caught himself humming in the bath, scared to silence after Neville asked him to _"name that tune, boyo!"_ Then Seamus, the fucking half-Muggle smart-ass that he was, tilted his head at him in the common rooms one day, narrowed his eyes and then smiled. The next day he left Ron with a collection of shiny silver discs under his pillows, packets of music charmed in performance. He asked Seamus to join him, to come, to see, but he had shook his head, said it was _"best left to the lions among us."_ Ron wasn't quite sure what he meant, but he quite liked the idea he was a lion among men.

*

It was glorious, Albion here on Earth and in Ron's head, traveling the craggy coast of England and camping out on the floors. Kipping back to Hogwarts via random floos at the small hours of the morning, placating the Fat Lady with Scottish sweets and pressed flowers supplied by some of the sweet girls that seemed to follow Pete in droves. Ron was hanging on by the skin of teeth in all his courses but Divinity, where he was pulling straight first, reading random signs in the water bleeding on windowpanes and the knot of Parvarti's hair, twisted impossibly in a delicate clip. Carl had pushed him toward that, toward opening his mind to the other possibilities of communication, his lips pressed together around a smoldering cigarette, his hands deep in pockets and shoulders nudging Ron's, tilt of his chin pointing out interesting architecture or some bird's arse in small towns that Ron can't remember the names of but wishes he could.

 _"Something's coming, Davey-my-boy,"_ Carl had said to him one afternoon, boots scuffing on the floor, still early enough that his eyes were only a little red around the edges. Pete kept singing, kept singing, wouldn't stop, smiled for the sweet, sweet girls and it was only then that Ron had realized that he probably shouldn't have had that last slug of whiskey, or the three before that, but Carl was still talking, leaning in to make himself heard over the cacophony of the crowd. _"Something's coming, and you've got to stop it."_ Carl's mouth was hot against Ron's ear and the bottom of Ron's stomach was somewhere on the floor and Pete just kept fucking singing, my _God_ and Carl kept talking and then everything stopped except for Carl's lips and nice lips they were, shame he wasn't into boys, but—

_"You've got to stop it, Ron Weasley."_

"What, what're you on about?" Ron stutters, breath held against the wind and Carl's words.

"Know who you are, known forever, since the beginning, _Dave_." Carl's voice is thin and reedy and the sky swallows it with a wet-sounding clap. Ron looks up, sees the clouds nimble by, dark and swollen.

"Who are you?" Ron asks, past the point of caring, beyond disregard and denial.

"I'm me," he replies, warmth gone from Ron's back as he pulls away to light another cigarette with the dying cherry of the one between his lips. "My mum is Clarice Cuttleswamp."

"The children's book writer?" Ron had a moment of total and utter terror, five years old with dancing spiders cavorting across a battered page in his lap, the creepy-crawlies charmed by the twins to continue crawling up his arm. "It's that old bat's fault I'm terrified of sp-p-p-spiders!"

"Oh, _Jump and Wriggle_?" Carl asks, like it's nothing at all, like he was talking about getting a pastie.

"Yes!" Ron shouts. "What the hell is going on?!" His hands are on Carl's shoulders, patting along his arms and sides, cold leather stiff against his fingers. "Where are you hiding it?"

"What?" Carl shrugs and smokes and stares at the horizon, not moving.

Ron feels something akin to frustrated rage, but might just be mild annoyance, a diluted version of that time in the infirmary with Hermione and Harry the Time Turner and the _agh, why doesn't this bastard have a wand?_

"The guitar, it's in the guitar,isn't it?" Ron shouts, hands open to the sky, rain spattering his face.

Carl shrugs. "It's not." He pulls on his cigarette, arms tight to his side and eyes downcast. "'m Squib, all right," he pushes out, quick, almost too loud.

Ron starts, feels that sick pull in his stomach he usually reserves for dead pets and people who've lost limbs to Voldemort. "Oh, I'm—"

"Sorry?" Carl interrupts, huffing out a laugh. "Don't be. Get to do this, instead." He waves a hand to the bus, to where Pete is dancing across the parking lot with a bag full of takeaway.

"But I'm doing this, too," Ron says, not thinking until it's out of his mouth. He stops, looks at Carl.

"You shouldn't be here, Ron." Carl steps close, hands on Ron's neck and smoke curling between them. "This isn't your world." He sucks in a breath. "Just like yours isn't mine."


End file.
